HOUSING’S SILVER LINING: TURNING REOS INTO RENTALS

Agent Genius BeatBy: Tara Steele

REO-to-rental market

With a continually struggling housing market, the prognosis for the sector is still poor, but there are areas of the nation and types of investments that are improving greatly, pointing to signs of life in real estate. One company embodies the signs of health, a family-owned company in Memphis that focuses on the REO-to-rental market.

Memphis Invest converts distressed REO properties to rentals, and they place a tenant, so it is a performing asset for private investors. The company recently released their first quarter activity report, showing a 67 percent year-over-year increase in the number of its homes sold to investors. Of those, 82 percent were REO, thus providing the nation a great example of how the REO to rental strategy can help revitalize communities one home at a time.

Chris Clothier, Partner at Memphis Invest is one of the nation’s leading experts in single-family rental real estate services and attributes the company’s growth to lower prices and lower interest rates, as he notes they have “removed many barriers for both novice and experienced investors, and these individuals are now getting heavily involved in the single-family rental housing industry.”